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The Theater of the NBA Playoffs
The NBA Playoffs transform basketball into a high-stakes battle, showcasing drama and teamwork. With sixteen teams competing, the playoffs unfold like a gripping narrative, revealing each team’s true identity through seven pivotal games. Each game serves a distinct purpose: from establishing identity in Game 1 to the pressure cooker of Game 7, where reputations are…
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Goal-Setting: Focusing on skills behind the performance promote a growth mindset
At this point, SMART goals are everywhere. SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, etc. It was originally designed to help individuals and groups focus on processes. The challenge – it doesn’t because we have lost perspective on what actually needs to be developed: The Skill. Goal-setting can be a fantastic structural tool when pointed in the right direction. The…
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Row the Boat
Two months ago, I wrote about the efforts of my hometown NFL team and my college alma mater to rebuild their teams by changing their cultures. Now we are halfway through the football season, and let’s check-in and see how it is going. The answer is not well at all. Both the Houston Texans and…
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Are Enforcers Making a Comeback?
This past weekend, Kevin Durant was ejected from a game for shoving an opposing player three times, the last time elbowing and shoving him in the neck. This came a game after where the Brooklyn Nets player should have been ejected for unsportsmanlike conduct, where he was later fined by the NBA for those actions. …
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Older Siblings: The Best Kind of Coaches In The Business
Older siblings can be tough, especially when it comes to athletics. The younger sibling is usually called too short … or too slow … or too weak; okay fine, that was him talking to me. My older brother, Nathaniel “San” Hensh, tragically died on July 21, 2020, and today, November 2, would have been his…
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Compassion Fatigue: The silent challenge of resiliency in leadership
Leaders who are invested in their teams carry an additional burden that seldom gets discussed. The stressors of those they lead. How do we know this? It’s called “emotional contagion”. We often can carry the emotions of others – it’s contagious. This is easy to recognize when we are dealing with a major event, such…
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Watching, Fast and Slow
Baseball and football are different in many ways. They represent different cultures, different lifestyles, customs, and traditions. The mere presence of a timeclock, or lack thereof, defines separate ways of life. Football is fast, and baseball is slow. Baseball fans and football fans also are different. A while back, a wise beer vendor in Seattle…
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Why I Love Coaching
I am a coach. I have been coaching for a very long time, since I was a young teenager. It is something that I love to do. I love being on the field, pitch, deck, court, and almost anywhere else a coach can be. I get excited about helping athletes and teams reach and exceed…
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Sports Culture: It’s An Education, Not Only Entertainment
Sometimes, culture and sportsmanship don’t manifest themselves in competition, they are embodied more so in practice and helping the athletes. Zack McBride, the Head Cross Country Coach and Assistant Track and Field Coach at Limestone University weighed in on the topic. “My best moment as an athlete isn’t just one moment, it’s many moments: every…
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The New Landscape of College Football: The Impact of NIL Laws
Over the past few years we have seen a drastic change in the fabric of college football. This is partially in thanks to the addition of the NCAA Transfer Portal, which was instituted on October 15th, 2018. Since the Transfer Portal took effect we have seen a massive increase in the number of ‘big name’…
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Compassion vs Judgement
We need to cultivate a culture that judges (evaluates) process, not people. The Reality Whether in a corporate or athletic setting, we do not explicitly discuss what we should or want to judge. We also do not explicitly discuss what we need to be compassionate about. So many of my individual clients, find themselves in…
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The Future of Baseball
I am obsessed with baseball, and this is my favorite time of the year. In the middle of the MLB postseason, my favorite team is in the thick of things. All of the series have been exciting, with several stars taking center stage. One of those stars has taken the internet by storm to become…
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Out of Sight, In the Mind – Catching Brain Damage Early
The contact heavy aspect of football has attracted many fans over the years due to the nature of the game; hit hard, hit fast. With movies like Concussion, directed by Peter Landesman, an emphasis is placed on all of the effects of this “Hit Hard Hit Fast,” gameplay. What do the players receive from participating…
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Wrestling and Pole Vaulting: Different Sports, Similar Cultures
To many people, culture means different things. For a lucky few athletes, we experience multiple sport cultures. Irwin Brambley, a beloved friend of mine and a decorated All-American wrestler, is one of those athletes. I was fortunate enough to get a brief interview with him. “What is sportsmanship? we learn from each other, and that…
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Coaches Learning from Their Actions
The Los Angeles Rams were trying to offload their quarterback, Jared Goff, earlier this year. And when the opportunity arose, they made a trade. The trade looked like a great opportunity for both organizations and both teams seemed to be good fits for the newly traded quarterbacks. Even Matthew Stafford, who was being traded to…
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Agree to Disagree? Why Embracing Disagreements Improves Culture
Recently, I read an article from the Harvard Business Review on why disagreements were so vital for a thriving culture. It really made me stop and think about my experience working with teams. At what point do we actually ever discuss disagreeing in a positive manner? I’ve seen plenty of models on communication and none…
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One Thing That a Coach Can Work on Today
As a coach, I always had about 100 tasks, ideas, things that I needed to work on, or discussions that I wanted to have every day. I wanted each practice to be the best for our athletes and team. I wanted each assistant coach to learn something and become better in their craft. I wanted…
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Breaking up the Club
Two off-the-field stories have dominated the headlines in the NFL this week. Both involve grossly inappropriate conduct by head coaches, although neither is surprising except that we heard about them. The “clubby culture” in the NFL may be beginning to break down. Finally. First, a short cell phone video of Jacksonville Jaguars coach Urban Meyer…
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Pole Vaulting: A Culture of True Sportsmanship
When one thinks of Culture In Sports, Track & Field (specifically the Pole Vault) embodies the mentality that any athlete should aspire to be a leader and to work hard. When I was eleven years old, I made the decision to be a diverse athlete. Well, that did not work; I fell in love with…
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The Physical Gap Between Our Best Intentions and Reality: The NWSL Crisis
“If we go along with you and lie our asses off, the world of truth and ideals is, er, protected.” That’s a line from an old (if you think the 1970s is old) movie about NASA faking a Mars landing in order to avoid embarrassment and maintain its meaningful work – one that also helps…
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Pressure Makes Diamonds
As our cultural shift has led sports teams from a centralized leadership role to one that expects each player to have those capabilities, the ongoing need for athletes to be more self-sustaining has dramatically increased. There will always be some sort of authoritative figure within the team, only now their dictatorship shared among others. How…
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Competence: It’s more than just doing the job
In a recent article by the Harvard Business Review (2020), 40% of recent graduates did not feel “job ready” and potential applicants would not even consider applying for entry level positions. They cited a lack of skills as one of the top reasons. It got me thinking about we cultivate competence in those we lead,…
